Digital Realty Opening $150m Singapore Data Center

Digital Realty is investing $150 million on a second, 13.2-megawatt data center in Singapore to address growing demand for data center infrastructure in the city-state and interconnection needs in Asia Pacific. Delivery of the powered shell and an initial 3.2 megawatts is expected in late 2015.

The company entered into a purchase agreement for a former 175,000 square foot paper storage facility and is converting the non-technical building into a data center. Legal completion of the deal will occur sometime next month, although power and fiber works are already underway.

Singapore is the network connectivity and business hub for Southeast Asia and one of the key hubs for the region at large. Data center demand is booming across all Asian business centers as foreign companies expand infrastructure to serve local customers, and as local companies grow together with the market.

Located in the Northeast, the data center will connect via dark fiber to Digital Realty's first data center, in the west of the city-state. The west is home to global Tier 1 carriers, the Singapore Internet Exchange and Digital Realty’s CloudConnect network.

Digital Realty opened its existing Singapore data center in 2011 at the International Business Park. That facility is massive at 370,000 square feet and 30 megawatts of critical IT capacity.

“Our first data center in Singapore marked Digital Realty's entrance into one of Asia Pacific's rapid expansion markets and enabled our global clients to enter the city-state and serve other regional markets with a trusted partner," said Daryl Dunbar, Managing Director Asia Pacific at Digital Realty.

Dunbar said the new data center expansion supports Singapore’s efforts in becoming a regional data center hub.

Singapore is one of the fastest-growing Asia data center markets with many providers looking to set up shop in the country. Equinix’s recent Singapore data center is its largest in Asia, and CenturyLink recently announced the launch of a cloud data center there. IO has a massive presence in the country. A swath of cloud providers have also strategically entered Singapore in the last few months, including Atlantic.net, DigitalOcean, and Linode.

Digital Realty said the new data center falls in line with the country’s Smart Nation Program. The program encourages the sustainable supply of data centers to ensure sufficient future capacity. The building will also be Target Green Mark Platinum certified as well as compliant with the Monetary Authority of Singapore's Threat and Vulnerability Risk Assessment Guidelines.

“Aligned to our vision for Singapore to become the digital innovation capital of Asia, Digital Realty's expansion will enable both local and international companies to build new digital capabilities and scale critical digital services in a cost effective and efficient manner," said Kiren Kumar, Director of Information Communications and Media, Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB).